Good points about not being stranded in a connection city. I had assumed that when the first flight cleared, the passenger would have gotten a sense from UA about the downline chances, so would know what to expect. However, misconnects or irregular ops. downline can happen while the first flight is in the air and those can change the standby likelihood + or - for the connecting-city flight. Reason #683 why I'd like the return of 1K same-day changes.